The 1977 New York Mets season was the 16th regular season for the Mets, who played home games at Shea Stadium. Initially led by manager Joe Frazier followed by Joe Torre, the team had a 64–98 and finished in last place for the first time since 1967, and for the first time since divisional play was introduced in 1969.

Torre was the club's sixth manager and in certain respects his appointment reestablished the New York connection of Mets managers. Although he had spent most of his career with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals, Torre had grown up and played his first baseball in Brooklyn. When the thirty-six-year-old Torre retired as a player that June, he left behind a .297 lifetime batting average for his eighteen years in the major leagues, including an MVP season in 1971 when he led the league with a .363 batting average. Torre was an able manager, with a veteran's incisive insights into the game and the ability to handle and motivate players. But in this case, a last-place team was a last-place team no matter how able the manager.

From a public-relations perspective, the Seaver and Kingman trades were a disaster. Seaver especially was a hard hit to the fan base. As a member of the 1969 World Champions, he was a symbol of past glory—one who was still a highly-effective pitcher—and instilled pride in the fans.[citation needed] Whatever else they might not have had, they still had as their very own the man generally acclaimed as baseball's premier pitcher. No matter how abrasive the relationship between Seaver and his employers had become, dealing him away was a serious miscalculation, and Shea Stadium became known as "Grant's Tomb" in the New York sports pages.

Grant did acquire some good, young talent for Seaver; Flynn was a slick fielding second baseman who won the NL Gold Glove award in 1980, Zachry was co-winner of the NL Rookie of the Year award with Butch Metzger the previous season (coincidentally, they would be teammates on the Mets in 1978), and Henderson would be narrowly eclipsed by the Montreal Expos' Andre Dawson for the award in 1977.

The rationale for the Kingman trade was that he would become a free agent at the end of the season, and the club would lose him anyway.[citation needed] But coming on top of the Seaver trade, aligned with the fact that the team got very little in return for their big buster, the Kingman trade only added to the growing disenchantment at Shea Stadium, and June 15, 1977 would forever be known to Mets fans as the "The Midnight Massacre."

Season highlights

On July 13, the Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs 2-1 with one out in the sixth inning when the lights at Shea went out as New York City was stricken with a blackout that would last two days. The game was resumed on September 16, with the Cubs winning 5-2. On July 15, when the lights finally went on in New York, the Mets split a double header with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

On August 21 Tom Seaver took the mound against the New York Mets for the first time in his career. His Cincinnati Reds defeated the Mets 5-1.